Republicans Plan to Block Iraq Debate  —  Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said Friday that his party would unite to block Senate debate next week on a bipartisan resolution opposing President Bush's troop buildup in Iraq unless the Democrats allowed votes on at least two Republican alternatives.

Suicide bomber kills 121 in Baghdad  —  BAGHDAD, Iraq - A suicide truck bomber struck a market in a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad on Saturday, killing at least 121 people and wounding scores among the crowd buying food for evening meals, the most devastating strike in the capital in more than two months.

U.S. can't prove Iran link to Iraq strife  —  Despite pledges to show evidence, officials have repeatedly put off presenting their case.  —  WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials acknowledged Friday that they had yet to compile evidence strong enough to back up publicly their claims …

Rudy and the Republican Nomination  —  To:  —  Team Rudy  —  Brent Seaborn, Strategy Director  —  Re:  —  Rudy and the Republican Nomination  —  Over the last month or two there has been a good deal of public opinion polling on the 2008 Republican primary race.

A FAN OBAMA DOESN'T NEED  —  SEN. Barack Obama might want to tell George Soros to shut up, now that the Hungarian-born billionaire has equated the George W. Bush administration with the Third Reich.  Soros, who spent $26 million trying to beat Bush two years ago, is a key supporter …

NIE: It's A Civil War  —  The intelligence community released its National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq yesterday, a nine-page document that the Washington Post correctly characterizes as "bleak".  It adopts the term "civil war" for the ongoing conflict in Iraq, and at the same time notes …

Spitting on Veterans  —  Slate's Jack Schaefer is joining Media Matters in desperately trying to establish the meme that spitting incidents involving war veterans is myth, an urban legend.  After all, that reprehensible behavior on the part of VietNam era leftists has hung like an albatross around liberals' necks for years, now.

House Democrats to hear from Bush today  —  WILLIAMSBURG, Va. - Talk about a tough crowd.  President Bush accepted an invitation to speak Saturday to about 200 House Democrats — the same bunch that in November wrestled control of the chamber away from Republicans for the first time in a dozen years.

Candidates Pick Tunes at DNC Meeting  —  WASHINGTON (AP) - Everyone needs a soundtrack - even politicians.  —  The presidential candidates who addressed the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting Friday got to choose their tunes, and it was an eclectic mix that reflected personal favorites and not-so-subtle messages.

The "Scooter" Libby Trial and Uranium from Africa, Part 3: Show Me Your Accord and I'll Show You Mine  —  [Preface: In the midst of her incredible live-blogging effort at FDL, Emptywheel took some time to send me links to some of the documents from the trial proceedings that have been made public by Libby's legal firm.

Happy Blogroll Amnesty Day  —  Hey, the blogroll is gone.  —  As I wrote earlier, one of the big complaints by new bloggers is that it's impossible to get onto blogrolls because established bloggers tend not to add them.  They're right.  A big reason for that is that everyone feels …

China Gets Cold Feet For Foreign Investment  —  New Regulations Spawn Fears of Economic Nationalism  —  SHANGHAI — "I know you don't know that you don't know."  —  Those insulting words, thrown out by a Chinese man to a Westerner, are the punchline of an Internet commercial that ends …

Slower Job Growth, at Least for Now  —  Job growth slowed in January, the government reported yesterday, offering a tentative sign that the economy may be shifting down a notch from its unexpectedly robust pace of growth at the end of last year.  —  According to the Department of Labor's report …